TV Choice: What to download or stream this week

Stuart Chandler

Coming down the wire this week. . .

BBC iPlayer: Joe Orton Laid Bare

This celebrates the wit, work and world of groundbreaking sixties playwright Joe Orton in his own words and those of his friends and colleagues. Fifty years since his murder at the hands of his lover Kenneth Halliwell, the film charts Joe’s brief meteoric rise, and tragic demise.

BBC Three: Hailmakers

New comedy which follows Saz and Sol, the country’s lowest-rent entrepreneurs, as they find out that there’s nothing harder than easy money. Saz and Sol are eager for success. If there’s money in it, they’ll do it. But on one condition: they will only work for themselves.

Sky Box Sets: Jamestown: Series 1

Duty-bound to marry the three men who have paid for their passage to the New World, Alice (Sophie Rundle), Verity (Niamh Walsh) and Jocelyn (Naomi Battrick) arrive in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619 with little idea of what the future holds or the disruption their arrival is about to bring.

Amazon Video: Vikings S5

The historical drama series is back for a new run, as fans wait to see what Vikings will be like without Travis Fimmel as King Ragnar. It’s not just the viewers who are missing him, as his death and the demise of his son Sigurd, has led to a civil war between his remaining sons.

Netflix: Dark

Anyone who is looking for their next binge watch after finishing the second season of Stranger Things is in luck, as Netflix brings us this very promising 10-part German series. It focuses on the case of two missing children, a time-bending mystery which will expose the relationships of four families across three generations, and bring to light a town’s sinister past.

Sky Cinema: Life (2017, Sky 15)

Daniel Espinosa (Safe House, Child 44) directs this grisly sci-fi horror starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson and Ryan Reynolds as astronauts hunted down by a hostile alien life-form. The big-name trio are members of a space station crew tasked with sifting through Martian soil samples collected from a nearby satellite.

To their surprise, they discover what looks like a single-celled organism, but excitement about a potentially groundbreaking scientific discovery quickly turns to panic when the little fella starts growing… and getting hungry. Sky Cinema on demand and Sky Cinema Premiere from Friday.